Ofcom can't take the heat of climate debate

The Great Global Warming Swindle ignited debate

By David Hughes

12:01AM BST 21 Jul 2008

The climate change lobby tends to react like scalded cats should anyone have the temerity to question their assertion that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. So certain are they of the righteousness of their case that it has taken on the aura of a religious faith - and heresy will simply not be tolerated.

The latest example is Ofcom’s ruling that Channel 4’s programme The Great Global Warming Swindle breached its guidelines by not being impartial and by failing to reflect a range of views on a controversial issue.

The programme was actually polemical and since when are polemics supposed to be impartial?

Yet for daring to suggest that there is no proven link between human activity and global warming (not least because there has been a marked atmospheric cooling in recent years), the programme makers were deluged with protests in what looked suspiciously like an orchestrated operation by the true believers. One complaint was 188 pages long and alleged 137 breaches of the Broadcasting Code.

Yet while Ofcom ruled that its rules on partiality had been broken, it also concluded that that this did not lead to viewers being “materially misled”.

In other words, the programme makers had sought to debunk a cherished theory by challenging an orthodox view, yet did so in a way that did not mislead the viewer. So what exactly is the problem?

This bullying is unappealing. Climate change protagonists would carry more conviction if they encouraged free debate on this issue, rather than trying to silence dissenting voices.

I don’t recall Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – that’s the same Al Gore whose Tennessee home consumes 20 times the amount of energy as the average American home – being impartial, or giving a voice to a range of views.

It was polemic, and highly effective polemic at that. So was The Great Global Warming Swindle.